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We may thus distinguish two phases of Intellect, in one of
which it may be taken as having no contact whatever with
particulars and no Act upon anything; thus it is kept apart from
being a particular intellect. In the same way science is prior to
any of its constituent species, and the specific science is prior
to any of its component parts: being none of its particulars, it
is the potentiality of all; each particular, on the other hand,
is actually itself, but potentially the sum of all the
particulars: and as with the specific science, so with science as
a whole. The specific sciences lie in potentiality in science the
total; even in their specific character they are potentially the
whole; they have the whole predicated of them and not merely a
part of the whole. At the same time, science must exist as a
thing in itself, unharmed by its divisions.
So with Intellect. Intellect as a whole must be thought of as
prior to the intellects actualized as individuals; but when we
come to the particular intellects, we find that what subsists in
the particulars must be maintained from the totality. The
Intellect subsisting in the totality is a provider for the
particular intellects, is the potentiality of them: it involves
them as members of its universality, while they in turn involve
the universal Intellect in their particularity, just as the
particular science involves science the total.
The great Intellect, we maintain, exists in itself and the
particular intellects in themselves; yet the particulars are
embraced in the whole, and the whole in the particulars. The
particular intellects exist by themselves and in another, the
universal by itself and in those. All the particulars exist
potentially in that self-existent universal, which actually is
the totality, potentially each isolated member: on the other
hand, each particular is actually what it is [its individual
self], potentially the totality. In so far as what is predicated
of them is their essence, they are actually what is predicated of
them; but where the predicate is a genus, they are that only
potentially. On the other hand, the universal in so far as it is
a genus is the potentiality of all its subordinate species,
though none of them in actuality; all are latent in it, but
because its essential nature exists in actuality before the
existence of the species, it does not submit to be itself
particularized. If then the particulars are to exist in
actuality- to exist, for example, as species- the cause must lie
in the Act radiating from the universal.
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